PIA14598: Across to Prometheus


Across to Prometheus

Caption:

The Cassini spacecraft looks across Saturn's rings and finds the moon Prometheus, a shepherd of the thin F ring.

Prometheus (53 miles, or 86 kilometers across) looks like a small white bulge near the F ring -- the outermost ring seen here -- above the center of the image. See PIA08397 and PIA07712 to learn how the moon perturbs the F ring.

Kinky, discontinuous ringlets can also be seen in the Encke Gap of the A ring on the left of the image. See PIA12650 to learn more.

This view looks toward the southern, unilluminated side of the rings from about 1 degree below the ringplane. Four background stars are visible.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Jan. 1, 2012. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers) from Prometheus. Image scale is 7 miles (11 kilometers) per pixel.

Background Info:

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .

Cataloging Keywords:

Name Value Additional Values
Target Prometheus Encke Gap, F Ring, Saturn Rings
System Saturn
Target Type Satellite Gap, Ring
Mission Cassini-Huygens
Instrument Host Cassini Orbiter
Host Type Orbiter
Instrument Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS)
Detector Narrow Angle Camera
Extra Keywords Grayscale, Visual
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2012-03-05
Date in Caption 2012-01-01
Image Credit NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA14598
Identifier PIA14598